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Can a G5 become an intel machine?

So I’ve installed Snow Leopard on five machines now three different ways.

1. Clean install
2. Upgrade on top of Leopard
3. Clean install with recovery of data via time machine.

And so far each of these have been filled with issues. High speed running fans, wide spread incompatibility of 3rd party add ons, slowness, lots of spinning beach balls, and the list goes on.

I have to say that so far, I’ve been very disappointed in my $30 investment. There are very little noticeable differences. And you have to really search to find them. I’ve had password issues on two different machines after install. The good news is that I’ve seen many of my favorite apps rush updates out to fix what Snow Leopard broke. VMware fusion, iStat menus, path finder, etc... Now all of these were to be expected and I’m not unhappy about the 3rd party stuff. That’s not the issue. Those issues are to be expected. The issue is that Apple is charging us $30 for things that seem could have been covered within updates. Maybe it’s the move to 64 bit processing that is what is at the heart of this. But it’s not on by default. You have to hold down 6 and 4 at startup to enter 64 bit mode.

I have to say that I’m in disagreement with the majority of people who’ve sung Snow Leopard’s praises. Just as I’m typing this, I’ve received notification that Snow Leopard would like to delete 62 (update 360 more) entries of my keychain via mobileme sync. What? Huh? No. Please do not delete all my keychain entries.

I’ve lost 3 gigs of space on the install and that’s after choosing not to install additional languages and fonts. Apple has promised a smaller OS. What? Then there’s the appearance of all the hidden files in the finder now. Good gracious. Where did these come from?

Before


After


Of all the positive things Apple has going for it right now, the Snow Leopard release first impression leaves me with more a feeling that they felt they had to put out a “we updated our OS too” release before Windows 7 starts getting all the press next month. I’ve not seen the speed increases other have claimed as well. I’m testing and pushing Snow Leopard on three machines currently and so far the results are very similar across each of them. Underwelming.

To be fair, here are a few people who would disagree. They’re smarter than I am and they have a few valid points. You can judge for yourself.

Andy Inhatko’s review (Chicago Sun Times)
Engadget
his holiness...Walt Mossberg (Wall Street Journal)


My recommendation for now is:

Wait a few weeks before getting involved with Snow Leopard. I wish I had.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to install developers tools so I can go in to terminal to re-hide all those files.


(update) Running 64 bit
_______________________
Just had Hulu freeze in Snow Leopard.
The latest version of VMware has also frozen.
Safari has crashed.
iMac refuses to restart on its own
Faster User switching name has disappeared
This image is a theme.plist hack